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1 month down

Yikes! January is pretty much over. And that means I really only have two more months to get this semester’s work done. Because April (the last month of the semester here), is exam time, so I can’t get participants that month. AHHHH.

On the plus side, I’ve put in a lot of work this month, and I’ve made a lot of progress. I’ve already averaged 4 hours of productivity every week day this month! Even though, as I write this, it’s only Thursday, and I haven’t hit my goal for today yet – I’m still working.

I’ve managed to write up my ethics document, which is always both aggravating to do but feels great when you’re done. And not because the aggravation is gone (you know there will be inevitable small changes required, but because going through the process, you have to decide firmly on what you’re actually going to ask the participants to do. So, once it’s done, it means we’ve decided on the structure for the experiment. And the survey questions we’ll ask. And so on.

I’ve also spent a ton of time coding (and re-coding) everything for my experiment. I’m not done. But, I’d say I’m probably half way there. Maybe a bit more, but it depends on how many bugs I find. And either way, that’s pretty good progress. I have an artist who is going to do some work for me (yay), but it also means that I can’t finish my stuff until that gets done. However, I’m pretty confident (95%), that by the end of February, I’ll have the whole game put together. Which would mean, I’d have the entire month of March to run experiments (if I can get participant hours).

Which would be awesome. Because it’d give me April and the beginning of May to analyze the results, and assuming their good (fingers crossed), write it up to submit for a conference. Which would feel great. And would mean I’d have made more progress in this single semester than possibly all of last year. 😛 And, I’d likely have enough material to do another seminar (I have to do one more still, not including the one at my final defense). However, I’m only hopefully optimistic that this will all work out. Because, I know if I get my hopes up too high, the fall will be brutal.